Chapter 20 Fracture
I savor the light flavor of Roxi’s supple flesh as I track the Skysprinters that Joey and Lenarro took.
It wasn’t easy to hear that our biggest traitor once loved the most important female to me and that he has continually hurt her since she gave him her heart.
I understand now why she hesitates to let herself care.
It is not just because Titans and humans die.
Joey made it personal.
It’s why I made sure he would feel similar agony in his chest until the day he dies. And while I don’t believe he deserves to be free and able to hunt us down again, he definitely deserves to suffer for a very long time.
I wasn’t concerned with capturing him when I finally got Roxi back, but now I’m certain I should have.
A defense system from a base on Gibarin tags Lenarro’s ship. It bursts and trails black smoke. For a moment, I fear the one who just saved us has already perished. Then my screen follows a beacon of blue light, falling away from the crashing ship.
Taking us in slowly, I track his landing trajectory and hover in from a distance.
I set the LightBlade down in a small meadow and cut the engines.
Unless someone passes directly over our heads, the tree canopy should shelter us.
Heat shields and ghostcloaks are still active.
So no one should be able to detect our ship.
I gear up and darken to Obsidian. Roxi is still sleeping when I check on her, so I drop the ramp in stealth mode.
It is difficult to be patient as the ship slowly pressurizes to match the planet and lowers the loading platform. But I try. Roxi deserves rest and to have someone care for her for a change.
Closing the ship, I begin my hunt for the one Roxi called Lenarro. He saved us. Esthi said he’s on our side. I watched my Brothers’ recordings. I believe her.
It takes some time to scout the area and find Lenarro’s heat source. He is tangled in a treetop, his emergency anti-gravity beam flickering like it’s damaged.
At the bottom of the tree, I fragment and rise as a cloud, surround him until I can find a way through the patchy protection shield, and switch it off.
Lenarro tumbles to the ground. He grunts, pushes himself up, and shakes his head. “Thanks.”
I extend a hand as I form up again on the ground.
Lenarro looks up at me, squints, then takes it.
“You do not trust Titans?”
“Trust gets people killed,” he replies.
“Sometimes, it’s the only thing that keeps them alive.”
Lenarro scoffs and looks away as he brushes himself off. “Great, I got a philosopher.”
“No. I am Fracture. Obsidian when I am in stealth mode and pissed off.”
“Whatever.”
“You did not get Joey.”
“No.”
“Good. He will suffer longer.”
Lenarro quirks his brows.
“But thank you for defending Roxi.”
“Long past time I did something good.” Lenarro grabs a gun from his hip and scans the trees. “We should not stay. They will come searching.”
I head back toward the LightBlade. “Roxi is sleeping. Joey used a coilgun on her.”
Lenarro keeps up with me. “You’re kidding.”
“No. He did seem surprised.”
“But he fired it?”
“Yes. Still…”
Lenarro is quiet for the rest of the trek back to the ship. As we reach the closed ramp, he turns his back to me and guards the ship like he’s done it so much that it’s instinct. “I can’t believe it. And I have to.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Joey loved her so much. He used to talk about marrying her and kids and a house. I thought he was losing his mind. He was such a wild teen. Hovercars, late-night parties, drugs.”
I still. “What happened?”
He shakes his head. “His father pressured him as a teen to clean up his act and join the military. So he did, went for CSP instead of Omega Force, because CSP is where his father worked, and the death rate was considerably lower. He said he’d only join if they’d take me, too.
He met her. Then his father pulled him into his corrupt sector. ”
“So he’s insecure.”
Lenarro runs a tracework-laced hand through his dirty blond hair. “Yeah. I mean when your only parent is full of demands and criticism and is never around… Anyway, that’s where he met Roxi. They hit it off. His father found out what she did, who…what she was. Is.”
He braces his cybernetic arm over his ribs and winces, then pops something back into place. “Joey wasn't all bad. His father made him that way. It’s why it took me so long to figure it out.”
I lower the ramp and motion him onboard. Then I close up and point to the medbay.
“I’m fine.”
He’s not. I grab him by his armored chest plate, walk him backward into the room, and sit him down. Fracture would ask nicely. We don’t have that kind of time.
My beacon might be missing, but I still have access to the local networks.
So I scan Lenarro’s body. He has multiple damaged synthribs.
A filtration unit for his nanosolution-tainted-blood is offline, and his reinforced femurs are registering a lot of nano activity, suggesting significant damage, likely from the fall.
I check on Roxi and find her still asleep. Her heartbeat registers in my vision, slower now…calm. She’s melted into the bedding like she hasn’t slept in weeks. I’m certain she’s only allowed herself the bare minimum for a long time.
I smile to myself, remembering the way her heart flashed as it raced during her climax. She is not made of parts like me. She still has a flesh-and-blood muscle that powers her body.
I miss mine and its pulsing warmth. My ultromotor hums in a three-beat pattern that I am used to. But there is something beautiful about her biological fragility that makes her life so much more precious.
Returning to the medbay, I sit beside Lenarro and pull over a cart of parts.
“What are you doing?” he asks, lifting his head.
“Fixing you.”
“I’d rather you didn’t try.”
“You are damaged. We need you.”
He fumes. “Can I at least have Fracture instead of you?”
“No.”
Lenarro rolls his eyes. “Sometimes, you Titans are so driven by your purpose that you forget to be…”
“What? Kind?” I interrupt. “Understanding? Gentle?”
He scowls at me.
“Do you deserve those things?”
“No.” Lenarro tries to move a leg on the bed and sucks air in through his teeth.
“I won’t make excuses for my mistakes. You sometimes ignore what isn’t a part of your mission when situations change in real time, and there isn’t time to meet and discuss shit.
Some of you get it. Most of you don’t. You didn’t kill Joey. Why?”
“Neither did you.” I study him as he studies me. “But you don’t really want to.”
“Neither did you.”
“I want him to suffer, yes. But saving a Creator was more important.”
“She was your mission.”
“Roxi is everything. She is my priority.”
Lenarro glances in the direction of the room where she sleeps. “Yours, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Just keep in mind that you left a string attached to her in the universe, and that’s him. He will always come after her. You ignored it, and now there are consequences. That’s what I was talking about.”
“I got her out alive. I would not risk the integrity of that mission to tie up strings,” I reply. “You spread yourself too thin. That’s why you continue to fail. That and you don’t want to kill him.”
Lenarro tolerates my repairs of his parts but doesn’t look at me. “Joey gave me a home when I had nothing.”
The moment I snap in his repaired filtration system, he groans a thank you.
“I do not like to see a human in pain, unless it’s someone who has hurt others.”
“I’m not human.”
“Closer to a BloodCypher.”
“Minus the mind control crap.” He grumbles as he rubs the back of his head. “Pried it out myself. Made a mess of the back of my head. But I couldn’t stand having Sin in there anymore.”
I finish replacing the damaged parts that I can, but I don’t have the supplies on the Lightblade that a Titan or CSP ship would have.
“It’s okay.” Lenarro waves for me to stop, then massages his repaired legs as if they ache. “I already feel a lot better than I have in a long time. Mostly because I have feeling again.”
“We cannot afford to lose the few people we have on our side. You don’t have to like me. I don’t have to like you. But we have to work together if we hope to survive.”
I tell him about Crezlith and the data Roxi hacked out of his mind.
“Thirteen thousand?” Lenarro gasps.
“Not including the Skysprinters.”
“Fucking hell. That's a lot more enemy ships than I realized.”
“They make them quickly, I hear.”
“But where?” he asks. “Earth Minor crews aren’t building them that fast or even pulling enough ore.”
“So there’s another planet?”
“Has to be.” Lenarro runs a hand over his mouth as he thinks, lighting up tracework in his hands like Poppy and the other pilots have.
Like Roxi.
“Were you destined to fly a Poison Arrow?” I ask him.
Lenarro looks down at his hands. “Yeah. We were supposed to fly for Venom Squadron, controlled by Sin.”
“How did you find us?” I ask.
“Been tracking Joey. He has a blood tracker. But I bet he’ll get it recoded now that he knows I’m hunting him. And just so you know, I do want him dead.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, the bastard sold out his own sister, Leah, used her as Titan bait.”
“Right.”
Lenarro shrugs. “But she’s safer with him anyway.”
“I detect a hint of jealousy.”
Lenarro quiets and crosses his arms.
“So you wanted his sister?” I ask.
“It’s not past tense,” Lenarro bitterly replies before inhaling a deep breath.
“But I know Titans were built to be stronger than us because that’s what we needed to win.
I mean, how much of a disappointment is a real dick after that?
No human woman is ever going to want a human male now.
We’re basically out of the gene pool. I’m at peace with it. ”
He’s not. But he’s coping. Badly.
“Lenny?”
He sits up as I look back and see Roxi upright, holding her side. She enters and walks right up to him and hugs him. “I can’t believe it. You’re still alive.”
Lenarro eyes me as he cautiously returns her hug like he’s afraid I’ll kill him if he touches her in a way I don't like.
He’s right.
“KillStar is too, last I saw a few days ago. She’s in a different system,” he tells her.